Business News

GUEST BLOG: Seasonal staff woes? Six ways to forward plan

By Business & Finance
12 December 2016
shopping street

By Rob Straathof, CEO, Liberis

The countdown to Christmas has begun; meaning the busiest time of the year has loomed for many businesses.

Whether you require more workers to cover sales, security, cleaning or general customer service inquires, the ever-increasing consumer demand causes even the most experienced managers to find the festive period a struggle – in fact, one in five retailers are concerned that they will be unable to recruit the right staff to work over Christmas.

To make sure you aren’t missing sales opportunities and falling behind competitors, here are six ways your business can recruit new staff to profit and ultimately survive the chaos of this year’s festive season:

Identify staffing skills gaps
In every workplace certain positions require specific skills, so panic hiring anyone interested will simply fail to solve current issues and potentially increase staff turnover, leaving you back at square one.

Before you even consider advertising available positions, sit down and formulate a required skills set for each department in your business. Include personal qualities, previous experience and qualification requirements to determine the exact employees you need.

Taking the time to analyse what you require from staff will make it easier to identify if your current workers are meeting your expectations, or whether there is a gap that needs addressing.

Identifying gaps in knowledge could resort from required staff training or staff not understanding their job role.

Either way, you need to decide on the essential required skills to make recognising gaps more straightforward, allowing you to begin your search for new staff.

Determine the type of employee you want
Let’s say your business usually operates with a regular workforce of 60-70 employees, but the seasonal peak means you require 100 instead.

In this situation you could hire permanent employees who will help you survive the festive season. However, this will be extremely costly, meaning you will probably only retain a few extra members of staff depending on the flexibility of your current payroll.

When the Christmas period is over, you will have extra employees on your hands; can your business realistically afford this?

You could consider seeking funding to help hire new members of staff over the busy season. An alternative to traditional finance such as business credit cards and payday loans, which usually have high interest rates and strict repayments, is an unsecured business cash advance, which would allow repayments based on how much you earn, which is less likely to leave you out of pocket after the Christmas period is over.

Alternatively, you could retain your regular workforce at 60-70 employees and hire temporary staff to see you through the season. This seems to be a popular decision, for recent statistics indicate retailers are looking to hire 700,000 temporary workers to cope with this year’s holiday season.

Get help to find the right people
Recruitment processes are often aimed at attracting applicants through advertisements in newspapers, online job sites and social media. However, a potentially substantial amount of these applicants might not be qualified or experienced enough for the role, resulting in excessive amounts of filtering, assessing, matching and communicating with them.

Furthermore, unresponsive job adverts will result in a widespread amount of expenditure that isn’t generating valuable leads.

Before you even consider advertising available positions, sit down and formulate a required skills set for each department in your business

If you’re looking to hire temporary staff quickly, employment agencies are a strong starting point. Also known as employment businesses, agencies will put forward candidates from their database that meet your criteria and who are worthy of an interview and consideration.

This will also extend your business’ reach, for some candidates might be passive or simply not have the time conduct extensive online job searches – agencies often have access to the candidate’s preferred choice of contact.

Know the law on seasonal staff
Fixed-term contracts: Just like permanent employees, there are explicit laws for workers on fixed-term contracts. An employee is on a fixed-term contract if they have an employment contract with the organisation they work for, or their contract ends on a particular date/ on completion of a specific project.

A worker would not be under a fixed-term contract if, for example, they are on a work experience placement or have a contract with an agency instead of the company they are employed with.

Seasonal members of staff are also protected under specific employee rights. Employers must ensure that fixed-term workers receive:

  • The same payment and conditions as permanent staff
  • An identical or similar benefits package
  • Information regarding permanent vacancies in the organisation
  • Protection against redundancy of dismissal

Agency staff: Employees who originated from agencies also possess their own laws. In this case, the agency is responsible for paying workers and ensuring their rights are maintained. You pay the agency the employee’s salary, national insurance contributions (NICs) and statutory sick pay (SSP).

After 12 weeks of employment, agency workers will qualify under ‘equal treatment’, entitling them to the same right as an employee who was recruited directly. These rights include:

  • Equal pay
  • Automatic pension enrolment
  • Paid annual leave
  • Start from zero for a new job or role

The 12 weeks resets if they:

  • Get new job at a different workplace
  • Have a break of more than six weeks between jobs at the same workplace
  • Stay at your workplace but take a new role that’s ‘substantively different’
  • A substantively different role is one that’s completely new, different work (it could be a combination of requiring new training and a change in working hours, hourly salary or location)

Remember: customers will hold your part-time and seasonal workers to the same standards as your permanent employees

Ensure they are fully trained
Many businesses make the mistake of assuming seasonal employees will learn on-the-job from other members of staff when in actuality, placing a new, untrained employee during the heaviest consumer-based time of year could lead to low productivity, disgruntled customers and a demotivated employee.

Seasonal workers might be temporary, but it doesn’t mean they should be denied formal training on your product/service, job duties and the company’s organisational structure.

Remember: customers will hold your part-time and seasonal workers to the same standards as your permanent employees.

Try integrating the training of permanent and temporary employees together to build team-working skills and prevent seasonal workers from feeling discriminated against.

Ensure staff timetables are in place
Christmas is a time for celebration and joy, resulting in staff members wanting to use large amounts of annual leave for family gatherings. Explain to employees that booking long durations of annual leave, especially in December, cannot be organised until the timetables are planned.

Allowing employees to book the major holidays off on a first-come-first-serve basis will mean an unlucky few will have to work them all. If your business is open during these times, hold a staff meeting where employees have to agree to work. Employing your temporary Christmas staff quickly is also beneficial for producing timetables in advance.

Photo: Nick Page

About the blogger

As CEO, Rob Straathof is responsible for the leadership and management of Liberis, with a focus on providing fairly priced, flexible finance, delivered responsibly.

Rob StraathofStraathof has spent time at Wonga.com in the corporate development team focused on acquisitions, and six years at JP Morgan in the technology investment banking team.

As well as Liberis, he has been a director at other SME-focused lending businesses including Everline. He is also the founder of one of Rotterdam’s first online B2B lunch caterers.

Originally from the Netherlands, Straathof holds a Master of Science in Economics from Erasmus University.